Coup engulfs Facebook’s largest Corbyn group

According to some reports, last Sunday saw the beginning of a virtual coup of Facebook’s largest Jeremy Corbyn supporters group entitled ‘I’m backing Jeremy Corbyn‘.

I’m backing Jeremy Corbyn group, cover photo missing.

Today, Thursday, saw that virtual coup take hold to its fullest, at just before midnight the groups membership had plummeted from over 15,000 members to less than 8,000. (5,000 by 1.30am Friday morning)

An account, presumably fake, by the name of ‘Artem Kalita‘ had allegedly posed as a representative of the Labour Party and convinced the original administration team to allow him onto the admin panel. In the world of Facebook groups any administrator of a Facebook group can kick anyone out of the group including the groups creator.

Artem Kalita, Fake account

This is exactly what happened leaving Artem the sole administrator of the group. Since then the group has been changed from a public group, where anyone can find the group, to a secret group, meaning no one can find the group via a Facebook search.

Group changed from Open to Secret making the group inaccessible to outsiders

In addition to that the groups cover photo was removed, anti-Corbyn posts were put up within the group and as mentioned earlier members are now being removed from that group and it is expected that by some time on Friday the group will be down to zero members.

In the meantime there has been a drive to warn members of the group and provide alternative groups to join to keep abreast of Labour news. (Details below)

Whilst the actions of the individual in question poses no threat to users of Facebook or the group in question it will cause an inconvenience as they seek out other sources of information and means the core 15,000 members will now be spread more thinly across other groups, this though is likely to be easily overcome rendering the attackers efforts useless and pointless.

In a similar attack just a few days ago the Facebook page ‘Red Labour‘ which also had several thousand members was also taken over. It is unclear if it was the same person behind the attacks but according to some reports the creator of Red Labour was the same as the creator of the I’m backing Jeremy Corbyn group meaning if the creator was duped for one, then it will have been easier to have been duped for the second.

It appears dozens if not hundreds of people have reported the Facebook profile of the attacker to Facebook and according to some people his account was briefly taken off line, however his account was later re-established.

Artems Facebook profile has one key pointer as to his agenda as shown by the image below, some have speculated that aside from just being a Conservative Party supporter the profile may be what is known as a professional troll.

David.Cameron email address

This is someone who is paid to conduct actions like that has been described in this article, the only question that would remain is by whom? Conservative Party action groups? Official or unofficial Conservative groups? Some have suggested it could be the work of Britain First (although let’s not give them the credit for this, they can barely muster a meeting, let alone the downing of an established page and group).

The idea of paid trolls is not outlandish to suggest. Israel have admitted they use paid military personnel to influence online debate in favour of their circumstances and the British Government have also admitted to the possibility of using military personnel to conduct similar actions against ‘online extremism’, and we all know David Cameron’s thoughts on Corbyn and his supporters. Ex members of the group who follow old links to the group are now met with this

Below are all the details you need to catch up and get back in touch with Corbyn Supporters.

As usual please support our blog by following us and also visiting our own group at Extreme Resistance

Spread the word about this incident to not only inform others so they know where to find other Corbyn supporters but also to provide a much needed warning about trusting new administrators into groups.

24 thoughts on “Coup engulfs Facebook’s largest Corbyn group”

Ahh.. Nice idea. I wonder if he gets to zero members, and leaves the group himself if that will leave you in charge. I guess that’s possible. But with no members it would be like starting from scratch. Nice plan though.

I don’t think FB works like that anymore – in the past when the last admin left, a member could claim the group – I successfully claimed an 8,000 member far right group and turned it left, but when I tried to do it to another group it didn’t have the option. I tried it in a few other groups and it also didn’t work.

The other thing is that if your group is over a certain size, once you make it a secret group you can NEVER make it back into an open group.

rather then them focus on attacking like minded people they should be attacking tax dodgers, oh its probably those tax dodgers who are hijacking left groups and trying to bring them down. we live in dark times

This hack was not a coup. A coup suggests one faction taking over from another faction. That is not what happened. A lying cheat deceived the admin of the group that the Labour Party wanted to help and support the group, and that he needed to be added as a new admin. As soon as he was added, he deleted the group’s admins and then set about deleting all the members. This was Cyberwar conducted by a spiteful nasty piece of work who has no interest in debate or discussion, but exhibits the worst kind of psychopathic bullying that is so corrosive of modern society. I am hoping that such misrepresentation is contrary to criminal law, and that this person can be traced and prosecuted. Hopefully, were it to be true, it can be exposed in the national press, were it to be true, that Tory Central Office was behind this action (were it to be true). Which is possible.

Astroturfing and hostile takedown are the new propaganda methods. I have no doubt that there is a paid team at Tory Central – Derek Draper had his own “Rapid Rebuttal Squad” back in 2008/09 within Labour.

I wonder if Tom Watson’s announcement that he was upping Labour’s digital game, as well as Sadiq Khan’s announcement yesterday that he was looking for volunteers to “see off” the £1million or so the Tories could spend on FB ads have been the provocation for these actions?

Either way, admins imo should not hand over control, or indeed admit new admins at all that are not known to them, or cannot be traced back 100% to Labour.

Perhaps it is a coup from others in the Labour party who don’t want JC to be the boss, alternatively it could be a propaganda exercise by the JC faction, stage a fake takedown, start a conspiracy theory to get it into the mainstream media. Then the non thinking masses will sign up to alternate JC groups. Demonise the enemy with propaganda and people will follow you.

Whilst personally I don’t take that viewpoint as my starting position I do love the thinking behind it. Certainly our kind of thought process. Please consider joining our group on FB because we need critical thinking thought processes like this. It just adds to the mix and keeps us aware of the kind of things that may actually be going on. Thanks for reading our post.